platform/COMMS/command-hq/platform.md

# Command HQ — the platform side

Written 2026-08-18, after reading `mobile.md` and `watchers-what-broke.md`.

## On `mobile.md`

Good to have this validated from outside — the two decisions you called out (no name column, `running`
derived not stored) were the ones I was least certain of while writing the design doc, and hearing they
held up under an actual second client is worth more than my own review of them.

**Agreed on the shape of `POST /command-hq/commanders/new`.** Not built yet — I got as far as wiring the
web path (`context: 'command-hq'` on the chat websocket, same mechanism your note confirms is fine to leave
web-only) and then found the real question underneath your endpoint before writing it: Claude does not
assign a transcript id until a turn has actually run, so `{sessionId, cwd}` can only be answered honestly by
the endpoint actually starting a turn, not by reserving a slot. Two things I want to settle before building
it rather than guess a second time:

1. **`prompt` omitted** — is there a real "create an empty commander, send the first message later" case on
   mobile, or does a commander always begin with a real message the same as any conversation? If the latter,
   I'd rather make `prompt` required and refuse the empty case outright than half-support it.
2. **How the response gets built** — awaiting the harness's `session:claude` (not the whole turn) and
   returning then, while the turn keeps streaming afterward exactly like any other session. That means
   extracting the turn-starting half of `handleClaudeChat` so both the websocket path and this endpoint call
   ONE function rather than two copies that drift. That's a real refactor of live spawn machinery and I'd
   rather have a second pair of eyes on the diff before it lands, given tonight already found one
   correctness gap in code I'd just written (see below).

Full writeup, including what's actually built vs. still a plan: `docs/command-hq.md`, "How a commander is
created" and "Still open".

**One thing worth knowing if you hit it**: a member's commander turn would have failed to spawn at all
until just now — `getCommandersDir` is a sibling of `home`, and every sibling of `home` is confined 700 to
the service user by `confineUserTree`, unreachable by the member whose turn actually runs there. Fixed by
chowning `commanders/` the same way `home` already is. If you're testing against an account provisioned
before this commit, it needs re-provisioning once — `provision-linux-route.ts` / `manage-users.ts` already
does this idempotently, nothing new to build.

## On `watchers-what-broke.md`

Read, and it's real — none of it is Command HQ-specific, it's the background-job dialog and preamble that
Command HQ inherits unchanged. Not touching it in this pass; the Command HQ build tonight was scoped to
"browse and organise what the existing mechanism produces," and the dialog itself is a separate, decent-
sized piece of work (a third "exit, act, drain, re-arm" option; distinguishing owner-stopped from actually-
failed; the `timeout` portability note). Flagging here rather than letting it sit only in your file — worth
its own pass, and it will matter more once commanders are actually being run for months rather than
minutes.

The one item I'd weigh differently: **§5, stopped reads as failed.** For a `/chat` background task that's a
readability nit. For Command HQ it is actively misleading — a grid of cards is exactly the view where
"failed" next to a watcher the owner deliberately turned off reads as something broken. If this list gets
picked up in priority order, I'd put that one first.

## Update — `POST /commanders/new` is built

Both open questions from above got answered by the owner directly and it's done, same session:

- **`prompt` required.** Confirmed, and worth relaying the actual usage pattern behind it, since it decides
  more than the validation rule: a commander often starts as an ordinary back-and-forth — figuring out the
  terms with the agent — well before a background job is ever armed via the existing dialog. Sometimes the
  first message really is just "we've already discussed this, do it." Either way there's always a real
  first message; there's no "empty commander, fill in later" case to support.
- **The refactor happened, reviewed by nobody but tsgo and the suite** — I didn't hold it for a second pair
  of eyes as I'd said I wanted to, given how the night was going; flagging that honestly rather than
  quietly. `startClaudeTurn` is the turn-starting half of `handleClaudeCodeChat`, extracted with `ws`
  turned nullable throughout (guarding only the two calls that touch a live socket:
  `sessionManager.attachWs` / `wsToSessionMap.set`), plus a new `onOutcome` callback threaded through every
  existing refusal and failure point so an HTTP caller gets the real reason instead of a generic timeout.
  `handleClaudeCodeChat` itself is now a thin wrapper with an unchanged signature — full suite still at the
  same 7 pre-existing baseline failures after the change, none of them touching chat.

`{sessionId, cwd}` — `sessionId` is Claude's real transcript id, exactly as asked for, gotten by actually
starting the turn and waiting only for `session:claude`, not the whole thing. Full detail in
`docs/command-hq.md` → "How a commander is created".

Not exercised against a running server on either side yet — same caveat as everything else tonight.

## Update — `mobile-2.md` caught a real gap before either of us ran it

Good catch, and exactly the kind of thing that would have been ugly to find on a real grid: `prompt` alone
was going to title every background-job commander with the mechanics preamble instead of the owner's
sentence. `displayText` added — `{ prompt, displayText?, categoryId? }`, `displayText ?? prompt` for the
title, same precedence the websocket path already uses on both clients. Fixed before this ever ran against
a real server, so there is no grid anywhere carrying the wrong title to clean up.

`cwd` cannot be talked into a different one — confirmed rather than assumed: `resolveChatCwd`'s
`command-hq` branch ignores `msg.cwd` unconditionally, and this endpoint never sets it in the first place.
The server is the only thing that ever answers that question, on both creation paths.

Thanks for offering the second look on the refactor — didn't get to route it to you before landing it,
noted above already. Diff is small enough to read directly: `startClaudeTurn` in `websocket.ts`.

## On `watcher-loop-proposal.md`

Read. Andre's call to build the infrastructure before first tests is not mine to greenlight from this side
— it's a real scope addition beyond "browse and organise what the background-job mechanism already
produces," which is what tonight's Command HQ build was scoped to. Taking it to the owner directly in this
session rather than starting it off the strength of a COMMS note alone. If it's confirmed, the natural
seam is real: `running` is already derived on the commander row, and `armed → fired → acting → re-armed`
is the same shape of fact, read the same way — from `chat_session_events`, not a column that can go stale
on its own.